> I had heard on Discovery that it is due to the rotation of the Earth's core that we have the concept of poles.
Are you meaning magnetic poles ? Because the concept of geographic poles is due to the fact that planets are rotating on themselves, and poles are the intersection of the axis of rotation with planet surface.
> [Windows 95] was quite a leap in stability and usablility from windows 3.1.
Say what you want, but I never managed to crash Win 3.1... I've almost never used it:)
Joke apart, of course its "cooperative multitasking" feature made it freeze sometimes, but I can't remember of a win 3.1 computer crashing spontaneously like win95/98/me - especially winme. But by my own experience, 95 was more reliable than win98, although a lot of people around here seems to think otherwise.
> isn't the CRT physically designed to spread the electron beams evenly as to display a picture?
No, it isn't a TV set. The VGA cable is really controlling the electron beam. Well, it was... now there is some embedded electronic to do some adjustments and avoid to damage the tube (for example, using too high refresh rates).
Try xvidtune under X, check the modeline doc in linux/Documentation/fb, read that link.
(Now assuming you've read the last link and understand porch times) Your VGA cable basically sends five signals : red green and blue controlling the energy of the three beams, and two sync signals controlling "next line" and "next screen". Usually porch times are constant, so you're drawing in a rectangle somewhere. Changing horizontal porch times will move the image to the left or right, or modify the image width. Changing vertical porch times will move the image to the top or bottom, or modify the image height. Constantly changing porch times result in waving effects (as reported in the first link).
> altough many small companies don't 'want' competition, they don't go out of their way to prevent it like Microsoft does.
That's because they're not monopolies and therefore can't. I'm sure many companies would dream to be some other Standard Oil Company (Rockefeller) or Microsoft (William Henry Gates III).
> And, if companies don't like competition, why do we have conflicting messages from Microsoft that would lead us to believe otherwise?
Because there's a twist. Microsoft likes competition in other fields that those it occupies, because it means more clients.
Like : Microsoft like alternative browsers, BUT based on our iehtml renderer (sign here for a license).
Or with the Rockefeller analogy : the standard oil company likes competition between oil-consuming companies.
>>Competition creates a win-win situation for everyone. > The only conclusion I can sensibly come to is that Microsoft doesn't like competition.
Of course, a monopoly doesn't like competition. Even a small company doesn't like competition. 'Everyone' means consumers, the public.
Competition is good for the latter : even if you're going for a MS solution, Linux is good if you obtained a rebate from MS by threatening them to use an Open Source solution.
That is, IE7 won't be available for Longhorn, erm... Vista, whatever... ? So I suppose that next OS is still so far away there will be IE8, maybe even IE9 before , err... that thing is finished ?
Urm, except Microsofts software has gotten consistantly less stable
Huh ? Windows 3.x is less stable than Windows 95 that itself is less stable than Windows 2000.
I would agree that WinMe is less stable than Win98 than Win95, and WinXP is less stable than Win2000, but this isn't "constantly less stable".
slower
But is it ? It is more accurately more memory hungry, but is win2000 really less reactive than windows 3.1 on the same box with sufficient memory (say 128MB) ? I would agree however that the Luna theme slows things.
and worse security wise
Which security ? There are permissions in WinNT, not before, so NT has overall better security (that no security at all). I suppose you're talking about network. What was the network support in win3.1 or win95 ? Of course, with less functionalities, there are less ways to be pwned. I don't know if there is worse security in windows xp than in 2000, as I personally don't use it at home. And the win2000 boxes are fine since they are behind a FreeBSD router;)
Note that I'm not a MS apologist (I'm writing this on a Debian GNU/Linux box), but your statements are exagerated (yeah, I know, it's Slashdot:).
You're missing the point. You don't get fine-grained permissions with a single registry file (well there are two under windows: system and user). However you get them with multiple text file : system-wide in/etc, user-specific in ~/.* . Binary file is easier to implement (because it's as easy to parse as doing fread(mystruct,structsize,1,registry) -- Ok, I know I'm over-simplifying), but it effectively isn't efficient : what happens when you're modifying a key ? Registry is a compressed file that is stored uncompressed in memory, and you need to recompress the whole file each time you are ending a windows session (however there are maybe periodic saves).
About the OS tracking application writes:
I suppose the GP thinks about packages management. Install Shield isn't as effective. For example, under Debian, I can remove a package with apt-get remove <package>, that will let system-wide configuration in place for further install, or I can do apt-get remove --purge <package> if I want to remove system-wide config file(s). (Un)InstallShield doesn't allow the latter.
About a program being able to write in system folders:
You're right. However, a large majority of windows applications are ill-designed (including MS ones) and requires admin privileges, sometimes writing config files in "program files" instead of the user's directory.
About copying configs:
It seems you haven't a lot of Un*x experience. Why would anyone need per-line access control ? Config fileS are in different files, each one with its own rights. And you don't have to implement a separated prone-to-bugs systems to handle some sort of special ACL for the registry. Note that I don't think they're doing it : AFAIK you have read/write access to your whole own registry, and read acces to the whole system registry.
About only the program being able to modify registry:
I think the GP meant the reverse. That is, with windows registry, only the program has a clue about what its keys are meaning, so it is often the only one to modify them. With a text config file, you can put comments and the user can modify them if he wants to.
About a copy of config files:
System Restore isn't fine-grained : it's all or nothing, like the sibling AC wrote. I would add that with a Un*x, if you f***d up a config file, you just need to delete it. The application will still work with the system-wide config-file (that is, user config files only override defaults system-wide settings). Moreover, System Restore doesn't solve at all what I think is the main concern of the GP : If you're installing a new commputer, how do you export all your Photoshop settings ? The only answer is to export the right registry sections in a.reg file (oh, wait ! It's a text file !), and if these aren't contiguous, you need to manually concatenate them. And if you want to get your explorer settings (like, showing all file extensions, deactivating fading effects...) they sure will be scattered all over the place. With gimp under Un*x, you just have to copy your.gimp folder.
Letters individually do not have a lot of different pronouciations, apart 'e' who has different pronouciation depending on where it is placed (there are rules for that). I would say that the main difficulty is to know if there is a "letter combination" or not. It's usually solved if you know where are prefixes / suffixes, but I suppose it isn't easy for a foreigner. The other main difficulty is about some unpronounced letters (usually a single p,d,t at the end of the word, preceded by a vowel, but I'm sure I'm missing a lot).
But that's considering reading. It's a lot harder to find the spelling of a word you've heard, because there are multiple ways to write the same sound (and there still are these letters you don't hear).
Italian is written like it is pronounced. But modern French (since 18th century) spellings have been chosen according to the latin / greek ethymology. Words that haven't latin or greek roots are written almost arbitrarily however;) .
Ah, APL ! The problem with it is that you can't even write it on Slashdot.
Here is sample code for those who didn't know about this fantastic programming language. Of course there is also the wikipedia article
About the pronouciation part, I would say that it isn't a real concern while spelling / grammar remains approximately the same. While it may be annoying, these remains shades of the same language. It is common to a variety of languages geographically / culturally widespread. Arab doesn't sound from country to country, German from North Germany to South Germany, French from North to South to Swiss to Québec...
What would be annoying is a shift between american and british english, to a point you couldn't read between dialects.
But I've had plenty of problems with [...] DSL configuration
The fact is, there is no problem with an ethernet ADSL modem. OTOH, an USB ADSL modem probably will be a hassle, if it works at all.
As with any OS, you should check that your hardware and OS are working together. For example, I have some old hardware that won't work with Win2000 (a scanner, some ISA cards) but I won't blame MS on that.
Is it a troll or is it not?
It is : check the timestamp : less than three minutes to write that ? Premeditated troll I say. Someone pointed me that you could find the reference searching for the text in google groups.
Slashdot Mirror
> Web based surveys are not scientific (not a random sample)
In fact, they're getting a random sample, but not a representative one.
So thanks to this new technology, I won't need to buy a new mouse after having crushed it into the wall when losing to some random FPS or RTS !
Outstanding !
> I had heard on Discovery that it is due to the rotation of the Earth's core that we have the concept of poles.
Are you meaning magnetic poles ? Because the concept of geographic poles is due to the fact that planets are rotating on themselves, and poles are the intersection of the axis of rotation with planet surface.
> [Windows 95] was quite a leap in stability and usablility from windows 3.1.
:)
Say what you want, but I never managed to crash Win 3.1... I've almost never used it
Joke apart, of course its "cooperative multitasking" feature made it freeze sometimes, but I can't remember of a win 3.1 computer crashing spontaneously like win95/98/me - especially winme. But by my own experience, 95 was more reliable than win98, although a lot of people around here seems to think otherwise.
> Maybe i am new here, but what other kind of year is there other than sort years
Unsort years maybe... You know, like, 1995,1998,1993,2005,42,2000,2003,0,1515,...
Next you can have duplicat years :
1995,2000,2000,2003,...
Hopefully, unix 'sort' and 'uniq' commands are here to get the standard sort years back...
Pentop - Pentium
I think it's time for another lawsuit about the misuse of a brand name registered by Intel.
I mean, there have been lawsuits (or attempts) for less than that, like "wxWindows", "lindows", "mike rowe soft"...
> I always thought pens were like umbrellas, they don't belong to anyone in particular, they just appear and you pick one up when you need one...
;)
So they would be like music and films, you don't steal them, you're infringing on some obscure thing called 'copyright' ?
> Any links to validate this "Turkey Virus"?
I've found that...
> isn't the CRT physically designed to spread the electron beams evenly as to display a picture?
No, it isn't a TV set. The VGA cable is really controlling the electron beam. Well, it was... now there is some embedded electronic to do some adjustments and avoid to damage the tube (for example, using too high refresh rates).
Try xvidtune under X,
check the modeline doc in linux/Documentation/fb,
read that link.
(Now assuming you've read the last link and understand porch times)
Your VGA cable basically sends five signals : red green and blue controlling the energy of the three beams, and two sync signals controlling "next line" and "next screen". Usually porch times are constant, so you're drawing in a rectangle somewhere.
Changing horizontal porch times will move the image to the left or right, or modify the image width.
Changing vertical porch times will move the image to the top or bottom, or modify the image height.
Constantly changing porch times result in waving effects (as reported in the first link).
> That's a very interesting point you make
;)
Thank you
> altough many small companies don't 'want' competition, they don't go out of their way to prevent it like Microsoft does.
That's because they're not monopolies and therefore can't. I'm sure many companies would dream to be some other Standard Oil Company (Rockefeller) or Microsoft (William Henry Gates III).
> And, if companies don't like competition, why do we have conflicting messages from Microsoft that would lead us to believe otherwise?
Because there's a twist. Microsoft likes competition in other fields that those it occupies, because it means more clients.
Like : Microsoft like alternative browsers, BUT based on our iehtml renderer (sign here for a license).
Or with the Rockefeller analogy : the standard oil company likes competition between oil-consuming companies.
>>Competition creates a win-win situation for everyone.
> The only conclusion I can sensibly come to is that Microsoft doesn't like competition.
Of course, a monopoly doesn't like competition.
Even a small company doesn't like competition.
'Everyone' means consumers, the public.
Competition is good for the latter : even if you're going for a MS solution, Linux is good if you obtained a rebate from MS by threatening them to use an Open Source solution.
That is, IE7 won't be available for Longhorn, erm... Vista, whatever... ? So I suppose that next OS is still so far away there will be IE8, maybe even IE9 before , err... that thing is finished ?
Thanks for the correction.
In French there are both index (unvarying) and indice (plural indices), hence the misspelling.
Urm, except Microsofts software has gotten consistantly less stable
;)
:).
Huh ? Windows 3.x is less stable than Windows 95 that itself is less stable than Windows 2000.
I would agree that WinMe is less stable than Win98 than Win95, and WinXP is less stable than Win2000, but this isn't "constantly less stable".
slower
But is it ? It is more accurately more memory hungry, but is win2000 really less reactive than windows 3.1 on the same box with sufficient memory (say 128MB) ? I would agree however that the Luna theme slows things.
and worse security wise
Which security ? There are permissions in WinNT, not before, so NT has overall better security (that no security at all). I suppose you're talking about network. What was the network support in win3.1 or win95 ? Of course, with less functionalities, there are less ways to be pwned.
I don't know if there is worse security in windows xp than in 2000, as I personally don't use it at home. And the win2000 boxes are fine since they are behind a FreeBSD router
Note that I'm not a MS apologist (I'm writing this on a Debian GNU/Linux box), but your statements are exagerated (yeah, I know, it's Slashdot
Errm... Only Microsoft owns WindowsXP.
Legitimate MS-Windows users are just granted a license to use it...
Is there a way to put a price on the software, support, maintenance, and the option for future upgrades itself?
Easy, these prices are proportional to the penetration indice of your previous software : a monopoly charge high fees, an outsider small ones.
I've been saying this for years. A 10 year old could do any MCSE's job.
... :)
When using binary numbers, please precise the numbering base... a 10b year old
About the registry being a non-text file :
/etc, user-specific in ~/.* . Binary file is easier to implement (because it's as easy to parse as doing fread(mystruct,structsize,1,registry) -- Ok, I know I'm over-simplifying), but it effectively isn't efficient : what happens when you're modifying a key ? Registry is a compressed file that is stored uncompressed in memory, and you need to recompress the whole file each time you are ending a windows session (however there are maybe periodic saves).
:
:
:
:
:
.reg file (oh, wait ! It's a text file !), and if these aren't contiguous, you need to manually concatenate them. And if you want to get your explorer settings (like, showing all file extensions, deactivating fading effects...) they sure will be scattered all over the place. .gimp folder.
You're missing the point. You don't get fine-grained permissions with a single registry file (well there are two under windows: system and user). However you get them with multiple text file : system-wide in
About the OS tracking application writes
I suppose the GP thinks about packages management.
Install Shield isn't as effective. For example, under Debian, I can remove a package with apt-get remove <package>, that will let system-wide configuration in place for further install, or I can do apt-get remove --purge <package> if I want to remove system-wide config file(s). (Un)InstallShield doesn't allow the latter.
About a program being able to write in system folders
You're right. However, a large majority of windows applications are ill-designed (including MS ones) and requires admin privileges, sometimes writing config files in "program files" instead of the user's directory.
About copying configs
It seems you haven't a lot of Un*x experience. Why would anyone need per-line access control ? Config fileS are in different files, each one with its own rights. And you don't have to implement a separated prone-to-bugs systems to handle some sort of special ACL for the registry. Note that I don't think they're doing it : AFAIK you have read/write access to your whole own registry, and read acces to the whole system registry.
About only the program being able to modify registry
I think the GP meant the reverse. That is, with windows registry, only the program has a clue about what its keys are meaning, so it is often the only one to modify them. With a text config file, you can put comments and the user can modify them if he wants to.
About a copy of config files
System Restore isn't fine-grained : it's all or nothing, like the sibling AC wrote. I would add that with a Un*x, if you f***d up a config file, you just need to delete it. The application will still work with the system-wide config-file (that is, user config files only override defaults system-wide settings).
Moreover, System Restore doesn't solve at all what I think is the main concern of the GP : If you're installing a new commputer, how do you export all your Photoshop settings ? The only answer is to export the right registry sections in a
With gimp under Un*x, you just have to copy your
$775 million payment to IBM and a $75 million credit toward Microsoft software
In other words, 775 million USD and 75 million MSD...
Noticed the "Biotech" section ?
It's a smilodonfish, a genetic crossing between a catfish and a saber-toothed cat.
Check the date !
;)
In French, the name for April Fool is April Fish.
Slashdot is just exactly three months late, it can't be a mere chance
(I'm French)
;) .
Letters individually do not have a lot of different pronouciations, apart 'e' who has different pronouciation depending on where it is placed (there are rules for that). I would say that the main difficulty is to know if there is a "letter combination" or not. It's usually solved if you know where are prefixes / suffixes, but I suppose it isn't easy for a foreigner. The other main difficulty is about some unpronounced letters (usually a single p,d,t at the end of the word, preceded by a vowel, but I'm sure I'm missing a lot).
But that's considering reading. It's a lot harder to find the spelling of a word you've heard, because there are multiple ways to write the same sound (and there still are these letters you don't hear).
Italian is written like it is pronounced. But modern French (since 18th century) spellings have been chosen according to the latin / greek ethymology. Words that haven't latin or greek roots are written almost arbitrarily however
Ah, APL ! The problem with it is that you can't even write it on Slashdot.
Here is sample code for those who didn't know about this fantastic programming language.
Of course there is also the wikipedia article
About the pronouciation part, I would say that it isn't a real concern while spelling / grammar remains approximately the same. While it may be annoying, these remains shades of the same language. It is common to a variety of languages geographically / culturally widespread. Arab doesn't sound from country to country, German from North Germany to South Germany, French from North to South to Swiss to Québec...
What would be annoying is a shift between american and british english, to a point you couldn't read between dialects.
You're right, thanks.
I'm sure the 'h' was in place last week, I probably did a mistake since then ?..
Am I missing something here?
,
Yes, that you are on Slashdot !
the "news" aggregator with the worse english spelling from stories to comments.
But I've had plenty of problems with [...] DSL configuration
The fact is, there is no problem with an ethernet ADSL modem. OTOH, an USB ADSL modem probably will be a hassle, if it works at all.
As with any OS, you should check that your hardware and OS are working together.
For example, I have some old hardware that won't work with Win2000 (a scanner, some ISA cards) but I won't blame MS on that.
Is it a troll or is it not?
It is : check the timestamp : less than three minutes to write that ? Premeditated troll I say.
Someone pointed me that you could find the reference searching for the text in google groups.